1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing technique, and in particular, relates to a technique for processing content data.
2. Related Background Art
While use of the Internet is now widespread, because of unauthorized copying or alteration of photograph data or music data, conventionally there are few cases wherein the Internet has been used by photograph or music agencies to sell photograph or music data. For even if photograph data were sold, it would be very expensive, over a million yen per photo, for example, and although the Internet has been used for music transactions, the quality of the data handled in this manner tends to be lower than that of original recordings.
Logically, it can be anticipated that high resolution data prepared from a photograph will have an initial high cost; to acquire the necessary image data, special film scanners must be used and several megabytes of image data are needed to reproduce even a small photo.
Furthermore, a basic characteristic of photograph or music data is that they suffer no deterioration over time, and that the number of images that can be displayed and the number of musical pieces that can be reproduced is theoretically infinite.
Therefore, since digital content data is susceptible to repetitive copying, and since copies can be used to display photographs or to play music innumerable times, one of the main reasons digital content data is expensive is the risk posed by the unauthorized use of copies. This risk also makes it currently impractical for photography and music agencies to vend digital content data over the internet. Finally, although the use of home personal computers to sell photograph and music data has been the topic of much recent discussion, as of now, it is difficult to view such sales as an established means of marketing.